It's a bit nippy down here

Today is the first day since we arrived that we've not had clear blue skies and sunshine. Despite the fact that the temperature is usually around -5C, today it feels it, simply because it's overcast, there's a *breeze*, and it's snowing lightly- it's miserable outside! This makes me glad that our survival training is over, and that unlike 6 of the winterers, we got to sleep in warm beds last night, and hang out in a nice warm laboratory during the day. 


Yesterday (1/12/2010) a plane landed on the sea-ice runway out the front of Davis, bearing German scientists that are flying across Antarctica using a laser attached to the plane to measure ice extent and thickness- similar to what some of the scientists were doing on the Aurora using helicopters, to look at the sea ice.  Apparently the group have been flying for 9 days straight, so the deterioration of the weather is a somewhat welcome reprieve.  The plane is the Polar 5, an AWI Basler, which apparently is a turbo charged version of the decommissioned Douglas DC-3s. It was pretty spectacular seeing it coming in over the ice, and landing on its skis- and also impressive how quickly it slowed down and stopped after dropping the angle of its body so its tail was lowered. 

On the 30/11/2010 I was lucky enough to tail along with some electrical engineers to go and visit Kazak Island in the evening. We jumped on quads and ducked down so that they could check on the cameras that are set up on one of the peaks of the island- the cameras are checked every 3 months, and the images taken downloaded, which takes about an hour. They're used for monitoring the ice in that area- the extent and duration, and also the tidal movements. The boys told me that if you flicked through the photos you could sea the ice moving up and down significantly with the tides.

 Cameras pointed at the sea ice aren't the only interesting things to be found on Kazak. There's an Adelie penguin breeding colony, and we spotted some Cape petrels and Storm petrels hanging around, as well as the ubiquitous Skuas, hoping for an easy feed. Based on the number of empty eggshells and mummified carcasses around the place, the Skuas don't have too much of a hard time maintaining their diet of penguin chicks and eggs.  

To the bottom of the map (thanks Jeff!), a great wall of ice can be seen, which is the Sørsdal Glacier. Once we'd downloaded all the data (which took about an hour), we jumped back on the quads and took off towards the glacier.

The Sørsdal Glacier is 28km long and heavily crevassed- and is named after a Norwegian dentist! On the way over we passed the blue Hagg heading back from a jolly, and 4 other quad riders who had gone over for a look-see. Driving up to the wall of ice was absolutely awe inspiring, as it towered above us. We parked the quads again and took a couple of photos, while Neo and I shared a cup of tea from his thermos.